


All About Those Expectations

by orphan_account



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Asexual Jughead Jones, Books, Demisexuality, F/M, Writers, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 11:44:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15750996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jughead Jones runs a writers co-operative space in Manhattan. Every week it seems like a famous author comes in to work. But the less famous ones, the ones just starting their career, tend to be nicer.





	All About Those Expectations

 

 

It wasn’t something Jughead noticed about himself right away. Even once puberty hit, it wasn’t obvious. Sure, his two closest friends, Archie and Clair were behaving differently towards each other – holding hands and sneaking off into closets, ignoring movies in favor of each-others mouths, but maybe that was just them. But by the time he was fifteen it was something he could not avoid thinking about entirely. Most of the school had paired off, and those who hadn’t yet, talked about little else.

 

Yet he didn’t have the feelings these other teens talked about. When he looked at some people he could see that they were objectively beautiful or handsome, but that didn’t make him want to do anything with them beyond talk. They were just people, the same as they had always been, and he preferred when they stayed out of his personal space.

 

He didn’t talk to anyone about it. He figured this was his own business, it didn’t effect anyone else. But it did make him feel out of the loop sometimes. Once he made up a fake crush, just to have something to talk about with Archie, but that didn’t last long. It turns out that even faking this sort of thing was boring to him.

 

Clair broke up with Archie at the end of 9th grade. That is when things became awkward between Jughead and Clair. At first Jughead thought it was just awkward post breakup energy that placed him in the middle, but as she continued to flirt and invade his personal space, he realized there was another reason. He turned her down, very bluntly, but made it clear they could still be friends. She wasn’t interested, which was unfortunate, as it reduced his number of friends to one.

 

Jughead went off to NYU with Archie as his roommate. During freshman year, Archie seemed to bring a new girl home every week and it was all he wanted to talk about, so they drifted for a bit. Jughead getting more involved with school and work than he ever had before. He had more friends again, the kind that gathered on a weekly basis to watch Game of Thrones or play video games.

 

When Archie and Jughead were juniors they moved off campus. Now Archie was more interested in music, and while he had a steady girlfriend named Veronica, he didn’t feel the need to talk about her all the time.

 

Still the walls in their apartment were paper thin, Jughead was very grateful for noise canceling head phones and 24-hour restaurants, but one day when he woke up from a nap, he overheard Archie and Veronica talking. They clearly didn’t know he was home because they were talking about him.

 

“So has Jughead ever had a girlfriend?” Veronica asks Archie on the other side of the wall.

 

“Nope. I don’t think he is interested.”

 

“A boyfriend then?”

 

“He’s not interested in guys either. At least as far as I can tell.”

 

“So what are you saying then? That Jughead is asexual?” Veronica’s tone sounds rather skeptical.

 

“Yes. I mean I have every reason to think so. We’ve never talked about it though. But we have lived together for years, and I think I would know otherwise by now.”

 

“Wow. I didn’t think anyone could be repulsed by sex.”

 

“I don’t think repulsed is the right word.” Archie says. “I mean maybe it is for some people, but not for Jughead. I think he’s more uninterested. Like he doesn’t see the point.”

 

Archie was right about the word repulsed not applying, but he wasn’t right about Jughead not seeing the point, he could see it, for other people, at least from a reproductive standpoint.

 

“I don’t get him.” Veronica says and Jughead knows that is true, asexuality aside. Even though it is an awkward conversation to overhear at least Jughead knows Archie knows now. It would have been a far more awkward conversation to be a participant in. He stays quiet in his room for hours till they leave.

 

Two years after that Jughead finds his own place in Prospect Heights. He also has a job he loves, running a writers co-operative space in Manhattan. Every week it seems like a famous author comes in to work. But the less famous ones, the ones just starting their career, tend to be nicer.

 

He notices her right away because she actually says thank you when he helps her with the printer. She’s tall and blond, always wearing a sweater. She carries her laptop in a red satchel. She takes her coffee with two sugars, no cream. She freelances for various weeklies, but reads on the side an equal mix of non-fiction and literature. Her name is Betty, and she is the only regular who never asks what his real name is, but always asks what he is working on.

 

She gives him space though, and never assumes familiarity. There are no surprise hugs from her. He likes her a lot as a friend, but he doesn’t remember thinking about Clair this way - noticing her women-ness so much. Not that he wants to kiss Betty particularly, but he doesn’t mind hugs when they happen and he finds that when she skips coming to the co-working place for a few days, he misses her. He finds himself sometimes fantasying that she is asexual too. That they can live across from the hall each other, sharing meals and time.

 

When he sees Betty at Veronica and Archie’s engagement party, a loud extravaganza, he finds himself shocked. It turns out that she’s “that Betty”, the one Veronica grew up with and talks about all the time. The one that moved to New York a year ago from Boston after going freelance. He can’t believe he didn’t connect the dots before, but when he sees her on the balcony, looking out at Brooklyn, he finds himself thinking – we could spend our whole lives together.

 

After that they start to hang out outside of the writing space. They go to rooftop patios and get one way overpriced drink each and linger too long after they are finished. They go to used bookstores in search of out of print favorites. They go for long walks in Prospect and Central Park.

 

Then after a year of closeness, on Betty’s 23rd Birthday they cross the Brooklyn Bridge at midnight after a fancy dinner with Archie and Veronica. When they are about halfway across the span of the bridge, Betty kisses Jughead gently and then pulls away and Jughead surprises himself by leaning in and kissing her, a second later.

 

Jughead feels something. Something he hasn’t before. It is a little exciting, more than a little wonderful. It goes on like this for months, the kissing. Every time they see each other outside of the writing space they kiss.

 

He doesn’t tell anyone about it and he feels conflicted. Maybe he is leading her on, maybe he wants to do more. But she doesn’t try to do anything more for months, and then one day she does. He recoils and she is confused.

 

After that he has to explain the whole damn thing to her - that he thinks he’s asexual, that he’s never had sex, that she has made him less sure of his asexuality, that he feels things when he’s with her that he’s never felt before. It is the conversation he has wanted to escape having his whole life.

 

She is the first person he’s labeled himself to out loud (he was active on internet forum for a while, but that was anonymous – different), yet he’s less confident than he’s ever been that he’s picked the right label.

 

Betty is shocked, at first she doesn’t say much, but then what she says is supportive. She says that they can move at his pace going forward (if he wants to move forward at all), and he’s shocked. This wasn’t the reaction he’d expected.

 

He turns to her then and tells her that he was her boyfriend, if she wanted him to be that, and she just laughed, and says “we are way past that Juggie, don’t you think?” and he did.

 

So he said “I love you.” and she had returned it. Even though things were uncertain between them, he could hardly ask her to stay here forever and not be physical with him, they were serious.

 

And six months after that he found himself starting something they hadn’t before physically. It felt good. Amazing even, but it wasn’t life altering. It was just something, one part of their love.

 

After Betty says “Maybe you’re a demisexual jug.”

 

He laughs “It doesn’t matter what I am, as long as I’m with you.” and she kisses him fiercely.

 

But later that night he googles demisexual and he thinks, oh this fits.

 

As he grows older with Betty, as they get married, as they have one boy and then another, as they move across the country for work and make new friends who have never known him outside of marriage, he thinks less about labels and more about how things are. He is busy chasing his sons around, and cleaning the kitchen and finding small bits of time to read on the hammock, to sit on the porch swing with Betty.

 

Still sometimes he thinks about the day he told Archie that he and Betty were going to get married and he remembers the look of surprise on Archie’s face, like he was only then realizing they were a couple.


End file.
